


Fear

by batyalewbel



Series: Ghost Quartet [4]
Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Episode tag 1x10, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 00:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16587578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyalewbel/pseuds/batyalewbel
Summary: Fear grew in him like a cancer.“Look at me,” Dad said, so calm and sure and all Steve could do was meet his gaze and tremble.The ghosts were real.The ghosts he had written about were real.





	Fear

_I am the astronomer_  
_And when I look through my telescope_  
_I am certain of the universe_  
_And I am filled with wonder from the stars_  
_And I never saw anything_  
_I couldn’t blame on my mind_  
_So I don’t believe in ghosts._

_-The Astronomer, Ghost Quartet_

Fear was the absence of logic.

And fear thrived in Hill House.

It thrived behind eyes averted or closed.

When he was a child and his dad told him to keep his eyes closed so he wouldn’t see the demented figure that pursued them.

When he stood, eyes determinedly averted as one ghost came so close he could feel the chill coming off it.

Fear grew in him like a cancer.

“Look at me,” Dad said, so calm and sure and all Steve could do was meet his gaze and tremble.

The ghosts were real.

The ghosts he had written about were real.

His world shifted on its axis.

Upstairs a new fear was born. One he hadn’t let himself feel until he saw Luke on the floor, one hand reaching toward him.

 _“Dad!”_ he called out as he ran towards his brother, whose eyes widened in another fear.

“Behind you,” he croaked and Steven turned in time for his world to go black.

\---

The dream was surreal. The unreality of it got beneath his skin until the moment his wife revealed her pregnant belly turning black and then a fresh panic coursed through him until…

_“Steven.”_

It was Nell sitting beside him looking grim as she reached out and touched his forehead and then...

\---

...He was in the Red Room. The door was closed and both his sisters were somehow there too. Along with Luke who lay still on the floor.

 _“Shit!”_ he muttered through gritted teeth as he crawled over to his brother, his hands messy and unsteady as he prodded Luke’s arm. He was almost afraid he might already have gone cold but he wasn’t.

That was enough to spur him into frenzied action, putting both hands over his chest and pumping hard. Shirley awoke moments later and was beside him cursing and crying. She took over on Luke’s chest pushing up and down on it with such force that Steven knew there would be bruises but he couldn’t bring himself to care as the foam at Luke’s mouth bubbled up and mixed with blood.

This fear sounded like pleading as Steve wiped away the blood and foam and pressed his mouth to Luke’s, breathing air into his chest.

_Please no, please come back, please._

This fear sounded like Shirley’s _“You better not fucking die,”_ and Theo’s soft gasp as she woke up and sat beside them with her hands over her mouth.

But Luke wouldn’t move and he wouldn’t breathe.

“Goddamnit,” Steve muttered as Shirley sat back, her eyes bleak.

“God _damn it,”_ he said again, rushing to his feet to pound on the locked door again.

 _“Somebody open this door,”_ he shouted, banging his fist on the red wood that looked black in the dark.

“Steven…”

That was Theo who had come to stand beside him.

“We can still get him to a hospital Theo,” he said and Theo bit her lip and looked away. He was about to slam on the door again when there was a gasp.

They both turned to see Shirley pushing Luke to lie on his side as he coughed and sputtered.

It was impossible, like so much else that had happened tonight.

“Luke, can you hear me?” he asked and it sounded like pleading.

“His pulse is pretty weak,” Theo murmured.

“We gotta get him to a hospital,” Shirley said and Steven only half heard them as he stared down at his brother.

“I thought you were gone man, I thought you were _gone,”_ he said, his voice nearly breaking as he grabbed Luke’s shoulder.

But Luke was staring past him with wide eyes.

“She saved me,” he gasped.

“You just woke up,” Shirley said and Steven just ran a hand through his hair, too relieved to see his brother alive and breathing.

“She saved me,” Luke  repeated and reached up with a ragged hand to point at something behind them.

It was Nell.

_It was Nell._

She spoke in circles, almost like she didn’t hear them at first, until they realized she was answering questions they hadn’t asked yet.

She spoke in circles about the house and the room and the four of them. And slowly she began to make sense.

Theo apologized for their last words being a fight.

“They weren’t our last,” Nell said with a smile.

Shirley apologized for not answering the phone.

“But you did, _so many times.”_

And Steven...he was _so sorry_ that he hadn’t listened to her. All those years he spent calling her crazy instead of listening.

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” she told him and it was so certain that he had to believe it was true.

Then she looked at the four of them, “I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. That’s all. _The rest is confetti.”_

And then Nell was gone.

\---

Steven didn’t know how much time passed after that. Luke started talking and he was making less and less sense and the panic was starting to come back. He couldn’t lose Luke too, not now, not after everything.

Luke’s eyes started to close like they wouldn’t open again and Steve was ready to start trying to break down the door when it opened all on it’s own.

Dad stood in the doorway and stared at all of them.

_Dad had come for them._

It felt like a thought Steven would have had as a child.

He entered the room slowly and then in a hurry with that wide-eyed unsteady steadiness. He knelt down beside them to look down at Luke.

“Hey son, how’re you doing?” he murmured, brushing a shaking hand through Luke’s hair.

Luke didn’t open his eyes, but his lips moved like he was saying something too softly for them to hear.

“That’s good Luke, you did so good,” Dad said like he heard him and then he looked up at all of them.

“You all did so well,” he said as though he knew what had happened which made no sense except in this house where nothing made sense.

“Thanks Dad,” Shirley whispered and there were tears in her eyes.

“We need to get Luke to a hospital,” Theo said. She was still holding Luke’s hand, but her other hand reached toward Dad the way one might reach for a life raft.

And it was Dad who reached down to gently pull Luke’s arm over his shoulder, grunting with the effort as he levered the unconscious man upright. Steven jumped in to support Luke on his other side and they carried him out of the house together, with Dad murmuring encouragements the whole way.

“You’re doing fine Luke, you’re doing just fine.”

Somehow they loaded him into Shirley’s car when Dad said, “You two go on ahead, there’s one more thing Steven and I need to do.”

The girls just nodded and got in the car. There was no room for questions at a time like this and Steven just stood there and watched as the car pulled away and wondered with a new and different fear.

What else did they need to do?

\---

It was like standing inside of a film.

Or a memory.

The house showed him everything as it happened, or perhaps how it remembered the happening.

His mother’s slow deterioration, a poisonous tea party, and the murder of the Dudleys’ little girl.

That was the secret his father had been holding onto all these years.

Protecting their memory of her for all this time.

And just when Steven thought that knowledge might be too much to bear, as he watched the ghost of Mr. Dudley carry his dead child from the house, his father told him:

“Some things can’t be told. They must be lived.”

And he looked down to see his father’s body, sprawled against the banister.

For once he couldn’t deny the truth in front of him even as that threatened to tear him in two

The ghost of his father stood before an open door. Mom and Nell waited for him but he stopped at the threshold.

Steven said he was sorry although he didn’t have the time or words to express how much he was sorry for and his father simply waved it away.

“This is all yours now,” he said and Steven knew he meant the house and the secrets. He was being asked to keep those secrets. His mother’s actions and the ghosts and the dead. He was being asked to protect Shirley, Theo, and Luke, the way Dad had protected all of them as best as he could for all those years.

And then his father told him how he was loved. How he and his siblings were the best of his father’s life.

“I was so lucky to be your dad,” he said and then he turned and walked into the embrace of his wife and his daughter.

And then he was gone.

And Steven was alone with the ghosts.

\---

He left the house behind slowly. It had his father, his mother, and his sister now.

So as he walked to the door, he said goodbyes to them.

Not aloud. Nothing could break the silence the lay steadily over Hill House that night.

But in his heart he said everything he could not speak aloud.

And it didn’t feel like enough.

Not for Dad or Nell or Mom.

But it was all he could do as he felt the eyes of all those ghosts at his back as he came to the front door and pushed it open.

He didn’t look back.

\---

First he went to the hospital.

His family had just grown smaller and he had to make sure Luke was okay and that Shirley and Theo knew.

That they all knew as much as he could tell.

When he broke the news, neither of them spoke. They didn’t ask what happened or how. Theo just put a hand over her mouth that might have stifled a sob and Shirley sat down very slowly on the edge of Luke’s bed. Her hands folded neatly in her lap.

Nobody breathed a word and Theo went out into the hall.

Steven went to check on her, just to make sure she remained in one piece.

She sat in a chair just outside the door with vacant red-rimmed eyes. But she was still alive and that was something.

The four of them were all still alive and that had to mean something.

It felt like ages ago when he spoke to that woman about her dead husband and told her that it was pointless to seek meaning in tragedy. Now it seemed a lot less so.

\---

Luke woke up at 3:03 AM, right when Steven was nodding off in his seat by the bed.

The lights were dimmed and both Shirley and Theo were asleep in chairs on the other side of the room when Luke sat up with a gasp.

Steven, a light sleeper for the moment, was awake in an instant although he simply sat up straighter as Luke turned to look at their sleeping sisters and then Steve.

“Stevie?” he asked softly.

“Yeah Luke.”

There was a pause and Luke swallowed.

“Dad’s gone isn’t he?”

Steven didn’t ask how he knew. After tonight there was nothing he could say except, “Yeah, he is.”

Luke nodded, eyes closed against the pain of it.

“Okay,” he whispered and a tear rolled down his cheek as he lay back down in his bed, rolling on his side, facing away from his brother.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Steven said and he thought maybe Luke had already fallen asleep when he heard a murmured reply of:

“Back at ya.”

\---

When he went back to Leigh’s he was not expecting an easy reconciliation. He was not expecting to be welcomed back with open arms.

Leigh had every right to be furious with him and hate him forever.

Out of everyone he had wronged it feels like he had done the worst to her.

The fight they had when he finally told her about the vasectomy had been fierce as a hurricane.

 _“What do you mean you got a vasectomy?”_ Leigh had demanded through gritted teeth.

“Back in college,” Steve had explained.

“What the _fuck_ Steve.”

He tried to explain why he had done it. Why he had lied about it.

Some of his reasons seemed good at the time. But Leigh had always wanted kids and he had lied about that for years. Through fertility clinics and pregnancy tests and measuring the level of ovulation or whatever the fuck.

That was the part that infuriated Leigh and he couldn’t really blame her for that even when he wanted to.

So when he came back to the house that night and asked to talk, she viewed him through narrowed eyes and tight lips.

“Alright,” she said, letting him inside, “Talk.”

So he sat down and told her of his regrets. Of being a terrible son, brother, and husband. He told her how he had been afraid any child he helped create would be sick like they had been. Sick in the mind with fears he had refused to believe in. He told her that he never let himself dream of having children for the fear of what he might pass on to them. He told her that Dad was dead and Luke was in the hospital and he wanted to come home.

Leigh came up to stand beside him and wrap an arm around his shoulders. And from his seat in his armchair he wrapped both arms around her waist and buried his face in her side.

“Alright Steven,” Leigh murmured and ran a hand through his hair as he finally cried. For the first time since Nell died, he finally properly cried in great gasping sobs and Leigh stood there for what must have been an age, letting him get her shirt wet with tears and snot. It was not a clean or pretty homecoming. But it was something.

When he finally got himself back under control his wife leaned down and pressed a kiss on his forehead.

“I have two conditions,” she told him. Firm and yet still gentle as one hand rested on his back, moving in comforting circles between his shoulder blades.

“First, I am going to look into sperm donors and you are not allowed to object to that.”

Steve nodded, wiping at his eyes with a rough hand.

“Of course…” he began but she stopped him with a hand before he could continue.

“Second, you never lie to me again.”

He stared at her for a long moment.

“Then there’s something else I need to tell you and you’re going to have to promise you’ll never breathe a word to anyone. Not a living soul and that includes Luke, Theo, or Shirley.”

Now it was her turn to stare.

She took a step back and sat on the couch again, her eyes never leaving his.

“Dad made me promise to keep something secret,” he said, “It’s going to sound crazy and you might not believe me. But if I don’t tell you about it, I might end up lying to you again.”

She met his gaze squarely, her jaw set.

“Then tell me,” she said.

He took a breath.

“Everything I wrote about Hill House,” he said slowly, “It was all true.”

She didn’t move.

“Except for the parts I apparently got wrong. But the ghosts...The things I thought I saw...the stuff I said my sister was crazy for seeing…”

He had to stop and swallow hard but Leigh didn’t move or say a word. She just sat there with her eyes fixed on him.

So he told her about the house making his mother lose her grip on reality. About how she poisoned a little girl and only their dad’s good timing stopped her from killing Luke and Nell. He told her about Luke running back to the house tonight and about the four of them following. He told her about the vision he had of her and of Nell coming to the four of them as Luke lay there dying from an overdose he didn’t do.

He told her about Dad getting them out and then him staying behind so Dad could tell him everything. So he would find Dad’s body and _know._ And about the promise he made.

“And I’ll understand if you think I’m crazy. _I would._ But that’s everything and you can’t ever tell anyone, including the kids.”

He looked up at her then and she blinked.

“The kids,” she repeated with something close to a smile haunting the edges of her mouth.

“I meant it when I said I wanted a family with you...I just…”

“I know,” she murmured and this time, she truly did.

\---

Two days later Luke would be released from the hospital and into Steven’s care. They said he should be monitored and offered him the names of a few rehab places but Steven said no. With Leigh’s permission Luke was going to stay with them this time while he got back on his feet.

Two weeks later Leigh would sit beside Steven at Dad’s funeral. He gave the eulogy and afterwards Shirley would say she still hated his books but he was clearly a good writer because the eulogy was beautiful. (And she added that she had heard a lot of eulogies so she knew what she was talking about.)

Two months later he sat beside Leigh at a doctor’s appointment as they explained what the process would be like for her to choose a sperm donor.

Two years later Luke was clean and Leigh was pregnant and they all gathered to celebrate. The remainders of a fractured family coming together again.

Steven would never tell them about the ghosts or about their mother. Only Leigh would know and sometimes she might hold his hand a little tighter when she saw the fear in his eyes and that was enough.

Steven would be afraid for the rest of his life but he still got to live it. And when he did die, twenty-two years later from a heart attack in his sleep, he woke up at Hill House with Mom, Dad, and Nell waiting for him.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm apparently on the defend Steven brigade. A lot of people hate Steven I guess and I super don't? Like honestly I think his worst thing was lying to the wife about the vasectomy everything else is just traumatized bbs bumping against each other in the worst ways possible. (Also having taken a nonfiction course or two in my day I can just say writing about traumatic shit really helps sometimes and I super get where he's coming from) And also I'm sorry but the bit with his dad is saying 'look at me' while a ghost gets in his face HOW CAN YOU HATE THAT SCARED BAB. Sorry I liked him a lot and I clearly had a lot to say with him because I think his ending might be one of the most haunting of all of them.
> 
> On a side note he is sometimes called Steve, Steven, or Stevie....balancing that in narration was...buckwild.


End file.
